


Heat Mapping

by goldfinch



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, F/F, Getting Back Together, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-16 19:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8114392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: She’s stepping into her building’s elevator, the concierge staring at her a little like, girl, what the hell happened to you, when it finally comes up like a nail pried out of a decades-old board. Well. Not quite that old. She first kissed Jessica when she was nineteen and barely anyone who mattered knew her name anymore. Jessica was one of those people, and still is.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [botherd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/botherd/gifts).



It’s raining and the F train is broken—which, typical—so Trish walks. Thinks about hailing a cab, thinks about taking the bus, but, in the end, chooses to walk. It’s less safe but there’s something about the rain, about her skin getting wet through her clothes; it recalls some half-buried memory she picks at as she makes her way down the block, weaving half-heartedly under the awnings. She’s stepping into her building’s elevator, the concierge staring at her a little like, girl, what the hell happened to you, when it finally comes up like a nail pried out of a decades-old board. Well. Not quite that old. She first kissed Jessica when she was nineteen and barely anyone who mattered knew her name anymore. Jessica was one of those people, and still is.

In the timeline of their relationship, that kiss falls somewhere in the middle, neither the first nor the last. It wasn’t an important kiss. But she remembers water on her skin, and Jessica’s mouth against hers—softer than she would have thought, what with the things that came out of it. Trish hadn’t kissed many people, then. She didn’t know if it was the same with everyone. It wasn’t.

She holds on to the memory as she comes into her apartment, as she checks the alarms and sets the deadbolt. Dries off, changes, makes tea. Pulls her shoulders back like someone is watching, which maybe he is. The residue of fear has lit up her body like an electric current, dim and trembling, all the more awful for the way it roars up suddenly when it’s quiet, and nothing’s moving. The hum of the refrigerator. Doors opening and closing down the hall. Low-current; life-destroying. She keeps thinking of how Jessica’s face had set, hard as a mask, when she spotted Kilgrave from across the square. Trish knows that fear, so powerful it flips backward into anger; it has to, or it will destroy you. Trish knows; she’s felt it herself. But the memory of kissing Jessica, its sweetness, is just strong enough to even it out. Tentatively, but the balance holds.

When she feels stable, she finishes her tea, washes the cup, and walks into the bathroom. She means to brush her teeth, wash her hands, maybe take a shower before she falls into bed. But as soon as she sees her face in the mirror, she stops. No wonder the concierge downstairs had stared. Her face is bruised and tender where the man struck her, the kind of purple makeup will only do so much to conceal. And years of punching vinyl pads had not prepared her soft, television hands for skin and bone and blood. Her fingers look fine but her right pointer finger aches like maybe she jammed it. Bringing her teacher to the floor with her body was not at all the same as trying to do it in a car with a lightning bolt of adrenaline running through her, even if her muscle memory was good. One punch. That was all, in the end, that it took.

She feels the tears welling up before she can suck in a breath to stop them, and then she’s just crying. Not sobbing, but close. She drags a hand over her face but it’s too late; now that she’s started, she can’t stop. But isn’t that the way of everything?

The sudden noise from the living room sends her into a defensive half crouch against the sink, already aware of how small the bathroom is, of how little space it offers her body. But when she leans out to look, she just sees Jessica, closing the door behind her. She’s probably broken the lock again. Trish won’t make her pay for it.

“Sorry,” Jessica says when she turns and sees her. “I did knock. I thought you might be in here, I don’t know, passed out in the bathtub or something. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay.” Trish smiles. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, try saying that without tears streaming down your face.” Jessica moves across the kitchen, not bothering to take off her shoes, though Trish has recently installed a shoe rack beside the door. She’s so obviously comfortable here that it makes Trish comfortable just to look at her, even when she’s not trying to _look_ look at her.

“I’m not even allowed to sob in the privacy of my own home, now?”

“Trish. Come on.”

The refrigerator opens; as Trish wipes at her eyes she hears the soft tinkling of glass against glass, and Jessica comes up with a pair of beers hanging from her downturned fist. She opens one with her hand, twists off the cap even though it’s not that kind of bottle, and slides it across the counter. Trish takes it. It’s very cold, but she sips at it anyway. And maybe it’s just because Jessica’s here, and she feels better because of it, or because there’s such relief pouring through her, and such exhaustion in her bones—because she was thinking about kissing Jessica when she walked through the door, she smiles, says, “Thanks for coming.”

“Course. You know I love you.”

Jessica is rarely awkward. She’s too full of anger to be unsure about much. But she’s a little bit awkward about this, and it sparks something in the back of Trish’s mind. A suggestion of an action suspended in the indecisive flood of I should—one day I’ll—I want to but what if—is it—

“Do you ever think about those days?” Trish asks. Then adds, when Jessica just blinks at her, “It was so easy, back then.”

“Yeah. Orphan, child star, real easy.”

“Simpler, then. Our love lives anyway.”

“That’s really the least of our problems right now, Trish. Kilgrave isn’t so much romantic trouble as gaslight-you-and-murder-you-and-dump-you-in-a-shallow-grave trouble." She pauses. "But that’s not what you meant, is it.”

“It wasn’t, no.”

Somehow they’ve drifted closer together, not quite on the same side of the counter but within reach of one another. Or, Trish has drifted forward. Jessica is standing very still with one hand still clasped around her beer, looking at her carefully. 

“What about Officer Simpson?” she asks, her voice dry, almost baiting. This is something Trish remembers from the first time Jessica got free of Kilgrave, the way she had turned inward, grown spikes. No one can hurt you if you hurt yourself first. But Trish doesn’t have the patience for it anymore, not when she’s holding her heart in her hands. Not when she’s been afraid herself, for so long, for the woman sitting beside her. In love with her too.

So Trish shrugs. Tries to make it look nonchalant, but she can tell Jessica doesn’t buy it—and then it’s all downhill from there. “I like him, but… god, Jessica. It’s only ever been you.” She laughs a little; she’s known Jessica since they were kids but she can’t look her in the eye and “Christ I’m pathetic. I know you’ve been with people; I know it’s been years, but….” Every time she’s around Jessica she wants to be closer, wants to touch her, crawl inside her. It’s easy enough to hide over the phone, and there was that stretch of months where Jessica didn’t contact her at all, and she knows, she knows, “I should have let it go a long time ago,” but when Jessica says her name her body still sings with hope.

“Trish.”

Her voice is low, not rough, but deliberate. Trish turns. And Jessica’s hand is right there; not quite touching Trish’s face, her neck, but _al_ most—

“Yeah?”

Trish nods. “Yeah.”

Their mouths meet with a thunderclap; too hard, Trish feels their teeth clash, but it doesn’t matter. Jessica’s lips are just as soft. 

Trish imagined, sometimes—after she knew, after she started training—what it would be like. They were kids before. They didn’t know anything. Jessica was even more caustic than she is now. But at night when Trish was older and it was cold she would sometimes slide a hand down her stomach between her legs and imagine Jessica’s strength, and what could be done with it. But this isn’t like that at all. Despite the initial roughness of the kiss everything about it is soft, deep, full of years.

It doesn’t turn into anything else, though it could; after they break apart Trish just drops her forehead against Jessica’s shoulder, and holds her close. “I love you,” she says, as though it were any kind of secret. “I always have.”

She feels Jessica swallow, the movement of her throat pressed against the side of Trish’s face. But she doesn’t say anything, and after a moment, Trish looks up. “Jess?” That old childhood nickname. Jessica hasn’t been Jess for a long time now.

After a long, considering moment, Jessica shakes her head. “Nothing. Come on, finish your beer and let’s get some Chinese food or something, I’m starving.” Which. She couldn’t be more obviously deflecting. But when she stands up she takes Trish’s hand with her, their fingers twined together, and Trish, she follows.

Her face still aches and her finger still feels like there's something inside that needs to be shaken out. But watching Jessica's shoulders move beneath her jacket, watching the sharp curve of her cheekbone when Jessica half turns to look at her, Trish can't quite bring herself to care. She's been in pain before. She knows it means more to get through it than to suffer, because pain doesn't make you stronger. Jess, at least, was already plenty strong before. And they'll get through this, too, same as they always have. Together.


End file.
